In which the first arc not so much “ends” as “gives way to the second arc”.13. Tracing A Path
Today’s opening ritual incantation: the story of the Prince and the Princess. Hmm. I don’t remember that jarring sound effect on the wipe from princess to girl-as-Prince? Sound effect on the wipe to the title out of this, too.
Immediately followed by the Shadow Puppets. Who helpfully recap the plot for us.
Huh, student council elevator speech over a different scene. A house, a woman, a tape recorder. And then it starts repeating. “If we don’t crack the world’s shell, we will die, without truly being born.”
Who what now the arena and the Prince of the story in red. And now him sitting on a floating sphere? In white. And someone talking to him. Giving every duel a name and a color. Recapping the whole series.
Are they going to make some narrative point by playing all the fight songs and the arena approach song pretty much back to back? Convenient, I’ve been wanting to ponder the lyrics of all of these together.
“Ever since [the day Utena chose to join the duels and the Prince flew down from the castle to merge with her and kick ass], the seal on your power began to break.” – mystery voice to Prince on sphere
The Council is being played, implies the Mysterious Voice. No surprise really somehow.
We are watching the entire show so far at blipvert speed, here. I’m expecting some kind of major revelation at the end but I’m not sure there’s enough room for it!
Mysterious Voice may be the Red Prince? Hmm. The rose he’s been toying with throughout this entire recap is of course pink, and a pink rose tends to symbolize Utena. He drops it and walks off into shadow, with a female silhouette who might be Anthy?
And then we stare at the rose for a while, and then we see Anthy coming home to Utena and completely dodging the question of where she was.
And then we stare at a black rose in a glowing case for a bit, and a black rose sigil ring. End of episode. Time to hit the bong and get a glass of water.
Basically I feel like the purpose of this ep was to say “hey, if you’ve been watching this as we make it instead of as the collected series, here are some very important long running threads we would like to remind you of, as we’re about to start bringing them into the foreground”. Here is the status quo – which implies that it’s about to change, even if I DIDN’T already know this was the end of the first arc. Though it doesn’t really felt like it ended it; more like we paused and took a breath, looking back at how far we’ve come so far, before plowing forwards into the next episode. She hasn’t fought Red Haired Student Council President yet.
14. The Boys of the Black Rose
Wondering if at some point they’re going to alter the intro to mark some major change. There was that one episode where the ending animation was different. We’re about halfway through the intro, in terms of seeing scenes that were also used in the show.
A mysterious house, and ominous sounds. Below, we have the Red Prince, who looks exactly like Anthy as a boy – our first real look at his face shows that he has the same forehead dot, even – talking to a fey dude with pink hair. About his black rose. Title card.
And Anthy is missing again…
And here’s Anthy’s Brother, and his girlfriend, who gets a frame with rotating pink roses. Anthy’s Brother is NOT the Red Prince? No, he is not, I just jumped back to the first scene to check. I’m just gonna assume Anthy is a gender-shifting hermaphrodite until informed otherwise.
We leave Anthy’s brother and switch to an unfamiliar office, where we start to meet the black rose dude with pink hair who is totally not a gender swap of Utena to go with the gender swap of Anthy who he hangs out with. And keeps a photo of on his desk.
And apparently Not Boy Utena is collecting government favors, runs a Black Rose society, and is recruiting the Student Council into it.
Blue Hair runs into Utena after his meeting with Not Boy Utena. Stopwatch: 17:00. Which pegs him starting it near the beginning of the conversation scene it’s a cut away from, with Utena’s first line in it? Is he timing out the show itself here?
Boy Anthy is named Memios? And oh my god he is totally Anthy sans breasts, or plus a binder. Boy Utena wants to make him into the Rose Bride and he just placidly agrees with the idea. And Boy Utena – Sergei – is totally Utena in a binder with shorter hair and longer pants.
Sergei is recruiting duellists to fight Utena. Well of course, she’s almost out of student council members to beat. And in admirable economy of characters, he’s recruiting Anthy’s Brother’s Girlfriend. I guess we know why she got the rotating rose frame.
Butterfly on the wall of the room A’s B’s GF is being interviewed in slowly becomes a cocoon, a caterpillar, a leaf, as it descends and she pours out her secret hate of Anthy. Then she gets given a black ring taken off a dead duellist and stabbed in the heart with a black rose by Boy Anthy. A rotating black rose graphic hides the blood. Obviously this is an event that will have absolutely no effect on the plot, nor will we see it repeated in any way.
Ooh, nice reversal of expectations. First the still scene of the forest and brooding clouds that often precedes the shadow girls. Then we’re watching Utena and her first GF walking through the school… but they briefly pass behind a window with the exact same rose designs as the walls the shadows are cast onto, and appear as shadows. I will be watching this next scene as both story and as a scene with the shadow girls.
Aaand… now Utena’s standing in silhouette in front of a stained glass window with the same roses, and here’s the Shadow Girls for real.
All the rituals are changing, but remaining the same. We’re climbing the steps to the arena and there’s a new arrangement of the Absolute Destiny Apocalypse song. Just another turn up the spiral, nothing ever really changes.
Except. Who is Utena going to fight? She’s had no conflict. Just a note pinned to a lonely stairwell summoning her to the arena. Something has changed; this is utterly normal for Utena now.
And now the fight. With the black rose version of Anthy’s brother’s girlfriend. Who is dressed in purple despite being associated with orange earlier on. And wants to kill Anthy. In an arena someone has filled with a hundred desks with red corpse silhouettes next to them, as a nod to the hundred dead students the Black Rose rings come from.
Boy Anthy comes down in the Rose Prince outfit, merges with Utena, and leaps at a’s b’s gf, using animation from the opening sequence – which was over generic duel background, and is now over the hundred desks. Nice bait and switch, Be-pas.
Then a’s b’s gf falls to the ground, exactly fitting one of those corpse silhouettes. Her ring crumbles, and the dead student she got her ring off of is cremated. Okay. The show’s world just got stranger; weird magical things are definitely happening outside the arena now.
Gf can’t remember a thing about being a Black Rose. Of course.
Ewwww grosssssss is Anthy’s big brother fucking her AAAGH SHES SUPER SUBMISSIVE TO HIM TOO
Next episode: we meet the black rose version of Blue Haired Student Council. I wonder if she obsessively times things too?